As though someone kicked up the volume on the background music, the sounds of the marsh rose as the sun set, leaving them bathed in the light that spilled from the windows amidst a chorus of crickets.
Caroline’s thoughts drifted to her mother.
Flo had certainly done her share for the community. People loved her for it, but it would have been nice if her charity had begun at home. Their lives, in so many ways, were a mess—all of them. Caroline couldn’t commit, or even have a normal relationship. Augusta seemed to feel she had to bleed for the betterment of mankind. As far as Caroline knew, she had no life and devoted all her time to her position as the Director of Volunteer Services and Youth Services for the American Red Cross. And Savannah . . . Caroline had to confess . . . she didn’t know her youngest sister any longer. She knew her life history, of course, but she didn’t really know what made Savannah tick. Savannah was quiet and distant and intensely private—something Caroline hadn’t realized until returning to Charleston.
“How are you holding up?”
The tenderness in his question took her by surprise. Her chest constricted a little and she opened her mouth to answer, but found her voice jammed in her throat. She swallowed and shrugged and for a moment, she could only stare into his knowing blue eyes, confused by the emotions his question roused.
He looked exactly the same, except for a few lines around his eyes and mouth.
Laugh lines?
Was he happy?
She didn’t dare ask.
Caroline reminded herself to breathe.
“Your sisters look up to you . . . even if they don’t show it,” he offered.
Only Jack had ever truly understood her relationship with her sisters. . . even when Caroline didn’t. Memories too sweet to be discarded filled her head. Defensively, she pushed them away and clung to the here and now.
It wasn’t his job to bolster her any longer.
She changed the subject. “Anyway, thank you again for coming to my rescue the other night. I guess you can say this is my attempt to thank you . . . I thought we could find a way to bury the hatchet.”
He grinned. “So long as it’s not in my back.”
Caroline laughed. “There was a time I might have contemplated that,” she admitted, “but we’re past that . . . right?”
His smile softened, his lips turning only slightly at the corners, but the smile faded a little from his eyes. “Caroline,” he began, and she braced herself for a tense conversation. But then he seemed to think better of whatever he was about to say, and conceded, “I’d like nothing more than for us to start over.”
Something fluttered in her belly.
She wanted to ask him what, exactly, he meant by that. Her idea of starting over was trying to find a middle ground where they didn’t want to kill each other, but she was afraid she already knew what he was proposing.
The breeze lifted slightly and the candle flickered nervously between them.
Caroline couldn’t avert her eyes from his. “So . . . how’s Kelly?” she found herself asking without wanting to know. It was impossible not to know about Jack’s love life. For all its cachet, Charleston was still a very small town and gossip had reached her clear to Dallas—mostly through “well-meaning friends” who thought she had a “right to know.”
Jack picked up his glass, took another hearty swig and then lifted it to show the waitress he was ready for another. He swallowed hard, as though biting back more than just the words he wanted to say. “We’re done.”
“I’m sorry,” Caroline said automatically.
“Don’t be. It should have been over a long time ago. What about you? Leave any unfinished business in Dallas?”
“No.”
The single word left a thousand unanswered questions hanging in the air. Jack had the courtesy not to ask any of them.
The waitress brought him another pint, and Jack tended to it conscientiously as they talked through a first and second oyster dump on their table. By the time the stew came out of the kitchen, Caroline was too full to eat any of it, but she picked at the sausage and shrimp. She noticed Jack avoided the shrimp, even pushed a few in her direction, remembering that she liked those best.
A lover’s gesture.
She preferred to think of it as his peace offering.
“Delicious!” she said. “Thank you!”
He watched her as she ate, his gaze focused on her mouth, and Caroline tried not to care what he was thinking.
He leaned forward, and her heart skipped a beat at his nearness. The table was entirely too small, too intimate. Even with the cool breeze, her palms grew damp. Butterflies fluttered in her belly.
“You’re beautiful, Caroline,” he whispered.
Caroline swallowed the bite of shrimp and then swallowed again, a nervous lump rising into her throat.
His hand slid toward hers on the table and electric pulses shot through her body. She didn’t move, couldn’t seem to.
“Jack . . .” Caroline protested and tried to pull her hand away—too late. He reached out, snatching it and pinning it to the table.
“Tell me you haven’t thought about us,” he demanded.
Caroline shook her head, confusion clouding her senses. “I-I can’t . . .”
“Can’t what?” he asked, his voice husky and low. He pulled her closer and Caroline didn’t have the will to resist. He leaned forward, his lips hot and soft. The light touch gave her an instant fever, a longing for more. Her body convulsed and she pressed her legs together, feeling the stirrings of desire. She jerked her hand away and sat back, inhaling a mind-clearing breath.
Jack simply looked at her, his brow furrowing. He didn’t sit back, didn’t move, simply looked at her with a mixture of disappointment and torment.
“Will you do me a favor?” he ventured.
“Of course.”
“I need you to promise me you’ll be careful coming and going . . . especially when you’re alone.”
“Of course,” Caroline reassured him. “Because of the break-in?”
His blue eyes pierced her. “Not exactly.”
The couple at the end of the dock, having finished their meal, walked past them on the way out, laughing together . . . in that easy way lovers had with each other.
The way Caroline and Jack used to be.
The alcohol was supposed to numb Jack, but it had the opposite effect. It hurt to sit this close to her and not be able to touch her. He had never stopped loving her and his sense of duty warred with his heart. If she were anybody else, he would never consider saying what he wanted to say . . . what he felt compelled to say, despite years of commitment to his job. Still, he considered his words carefully, knowing he was about to step over the line.
Since the break-in at her house, his nightmares were giving him cold sweats at night. The Aldridge estate was a stone’s throw from the site of the Jones murder. There was a rising sense of dread in his bones that he couldn’t shake. If anything happened to Caroline—or to her sisters—because he kept what he’d learned from the coroner to himself... well, he couldn’t live with it.
He sipped at his beer, waiting for the couple to leave before continuing. “It’s just a hunch,” he said, once they were alone, “but it’s a strong one, Caroline . . . it’s not safe for anyone to be out alone at night.”
She laughed. “Now I suppose you’re going to offer to be my bodyguard?”
He didn’t smile. “I’m dead serious.”
Caroline visibly stiffened. “Why, Jack? Do you think there might be more murders?”
Jack took another long pull of his drink before answering, feeling tortured to the core of his soul. Still, he couldn’t quite bring himself to betray his badge. “Not sure,” he said. But those two little words held the entire welfare of a city within them and carried the weight of his professional responsibility. He was a police officer. Wasn’t that what he was supposed to do? Protect people? If he couldn’t even protect the woman he loved—that he had lov
ed nearly his entire life—what the hell good was his badge?
The surrounding marsh took on a far less benign air.
The waitress brought Jack another pint without his having to ask for it and he waited for her to leave.
Caroline sat forward. “Are you saying what I think you’re saying, Jack?”
He weighed his words carefully. “Bottom line . . . we don’t know what we’re dealing with yet.”
But Jack did know to trust that feeling in his gut. Only once—ever—had he not listened . . . and the next morning they’d escorted him to the morgue to ID his mother’s body.
Judging by the condition of Amy Jones’s body, her murder had not been perpetrated impulsively—not fueled by rage or hostility. No matter how he looked at it, he couldn’t shake the feeling the murderer had been interrupted . . . preparing the body for something else . . . that this wasn’t his first murder . . . nor would it be his last.
He could see the wheels turning behind Caroline’s bright hazel eyes. “Are you going to hold a press conference?”
Jack’s shoulders tensed. He’d said too much already . . . and yet not enough. He’d rather lose his badge than lose her. Filled with turmoil, he shook his head.
“Don’t you believe people have the right to know?”
“There’s only one body,” he said pointedly, and felt like a hypocrite because that was precisely why he’d warned Caroline—so she could protect herself—but talking to the woman he loved was far different from sending an entire city into a panic.
Her expression suddenly turned to fury. “What about Amanda Hutto?”
“What about her?”
“She’s missing, Jack!”
“That’s the problem, Caroline. She’s missing. You can’t make a determination about a person’s fate when you have no body.”
Her nostrils flared and Jack sensed she wanted to say more.
“Do you believe her disappearance is connected to the Jones case?”
He shook his head. “I don’t see what a twenty-two-year-old college girl and a six-year-old kid have in common.”
Her shoulders were back and her expression revealed unreserved anger. “Remember Gaskins? His victims had nothing in common!” Caroline sat back in her chair, tossed her napkin on the table and whatever tenuous connection Jack had felt between them vanished. “Do you at least have a lead?” she asked, a little calmer now, but with an edge he’d never noticed in her before this second.
In fact, for the first time since meeting her—at just fifteen—he saw not the sweet susceptible girl he had fallen in love with and nearly married, nor the woman who had practically left him standing at the altar . . . nor the object of his current obsession, but a total stranger. “Maybe,” he admitted, clamming up. “I can’t say.”
A sudden chill jetted down Caroline’s spine.
Despite the warm breeze, she wished she’d brought a sweater.
The chirping of crickets and the croaking of frogs were suddenly like death shrieks. The night seemed forbidding, black, and that scent she had become so ambivalent about lately turned foul, like the indissoluble smell of decay.
Her emotions hovered close to the surface.
Her memory flashed to that day on the beach with her brother. What if it were Sammy who was missing right now? She remembered Karen Hutto’s face, full of anguish and pain. There was a city full of Karen Huttos out there—all of them ready to protect their children—if provided the right information. She didn’t understand a sense of due process that endangered the welfare of others.
Whatever she felt for Jack, it was eclipsed by an overwhelming desire to do the right thing. No, she needed to do the right thing.
The waitress returned to ask Jack if he wanted another beer, but before he could respond, Caroline picked up her purse and fished through it for her wallet, retrieving her credit card. She handed it to the waitress, smiling tautly. “Dinner’s on me,” she announced, turning to Jack. “I’ll expense it.”
He looked too shell-shocked to protest and the waitress hesitated only a moment before walking away with Caroline’s card.
Caroline stood. “Thanks for the conversation, Jack. It was very enlightening.”
He sat there, peering up at her, his blue eyes shuttered, and Caroline was too rattled to know what more to say. He seemed somehow cold and removed, and this moment, she felt anything but. Every nerve in her body was screaming and her heart was thumping like a fist against her rib cage. She couldn’t just sit there and pretend everything was okay.
She followed the waitress inside to sign the check and left Jack sitting alone, not daring to look back to see if he watched her leave. All she knew was that this time, she wasn’t helpless. She didn’t have to sit idly by and watch the world go to hell.
Chapter Eleven
Only a blind man could have missed the screaming front-page headline in the morning edition of the Tribune.
SECESSIONVILLE CREEK KILLER: AUTHORITIES FEAR MORE DEATHS
Jack did a double take at the dispenser outside the Lockwood station, and fished money out of his pocket to pay for a single issue. Once he had it in his hand, he went inside and threw the paper unceremoniously onto his desk, then sat down, cursing.
He wasn’t at his desk more than twenty seconds before his partner came in to show him a copy of the same paper. Jack threw him out and got up and slammed his door shut. Don Garrison was a good detective, but with his mildly competitive nature it was a little like rubbing salt on a wound right now.
He understood why Caroline felt driven to warn the masses. The Hutto girl. It hit her right where she lived—in the long shadow of her brother’s death. She was thinking with her heart, not her head.
He sat down and took a deep breath as he fished his cell phone out of his pocket. Even before he exhaled, he was dialing Caroline’s number.
No answer.
He wasn’t surprised. He hung up and dialed again, and again, leaving a message only after the third time he heard her short, impersonal greeting.
Maybe he should have expected this—and he would have from her mother—but this was Caroline. Despite her abrupt dismissal last night, her preemptive action blindsided him.
“You aren’t qualified to run this paper!”
Frank Bonneau’s voice boomed throughout the brick walls of the old building. Beyond the glass doors of her office, Caroline could see that heads were down in the newsroom, staff members hiding in their cubicles as though they were holed up in trenches, bracing for heavy artillery.
Having been dragged in against her will, Pam sat in a corner chair in Caroline’s office, head down, not daring to speak a word. Frank had been yelling so long and hard that even her office windows were beginning to fog. To say he was angry was an understatement.
Caroline let him blow off steam, feeling worse for Pam than she did for herself, because she had expected his anger. For better or worse, she believed she was doing the right thing and she was prepared to defend her action.
Red-faced, waving a copy of today’s Tribune, he continued shouting, “Do you have any idea what the Post will do with this?”
The “this” he was talking about was the front-page story Caroline had pushed through late last night after leaving Jack. Colluding with Pam on the paper’s final twelve P.M. bedtime, she’d given Pam the story and the byline. They had worked together all night, until the last possible minute, verifying information and securing a second source.
From the moment the issue hit the stands, the phones began to ring—the police department, Pam’s new source at CPD, wanting to make certain he wouldn’t be identified, Jack, random strangers, other reporters wanting more information.
“In all my forty-some years,” Frank was yelling, “I have never seen more shoddy journalism! Who in their right mind releases a story like this when there’s only one body! Congratulations, Ms. Aldridge,” he said. “You’re going to scare the shit out of this city based on speculation!” He shook his head in disgust and h
urled the paper onto her desk. “I would never have approved that!”
“Then you should have stayed last night.”
In protest of the changes forthcoming, Frank had gone home early and Caroline bumped one of his front-page stories—not that she had intended to do anything behind his back. It had just turned out that way, and she didn’t call him because, well, she didn’t want an argument.
“I am not going to baby-sit you, and I am not going to spend my last years in the newsroom butting heads with a snot-nosed girl who thinks she knows more than anyone else because she went to an Ivy League school and worked at a handful of sensationalized rags!”
“I have never worked at a rag!” Caroline assured him, trying to keep her voice calm. “Every paper I have ever been associated with has received industry recognition. That’s completely unfair to say, Frank.” She understood the principles of journalism and she could back her story. “I stumbled on a lead,” she said defensively. “I ran with it and my source is one hundred percent reliable.”
“Your source is anonymous!” he shouted back, riling himself all over again.
“We checked with a second source at CPD, who verified that the possibility of a serial killer has been discussed.”
“Surprise, surprise! A second anonymous source!”
And now, Caroline was getting angry. She’d had about enough of his temper tantrum. “We quoted on background! That’s perfectly legitimate! Not the same thing as anonymity!”
“Are you really going to teach me about journalism?” he asked, his eyes bulging and his face florid.
Caroline brought her tone down, realizing how high it had risen in response to his. “We named both sources as detectives and Pam called to verify everything. We even corroborated details with the roommate.”
“That’s another thing!” he said, his tone rising again. He peered over at Pam. “Did you or Pam do this goddamn interview?”
Pam ducked her head lower.
“I did the initial interview but gave Pam the story.”
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